


a moment, elaborate and weak

by Zara Hemla (zarahemla)



Category: mysterious skin
Genre: Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-30
Updated: 2009-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-05 11:47:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarahemla/pseuds/Zara%20Hemla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hutchinson, kansas; a children's playground; a boy with a bottomless pit where his heart should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a moment, elaborate and weak

I left Wendy's place in the New York darkness, and I didn't wake her up. Probably she wanted me to, but you can't always get what you want, right? She'd of asked me a million questions, and the first one would have been, what happened to your face, and I'd have to say something flip and useless like, some guy didn't like sprouts on his foot-long. Yeah, very funny, it felt like a foot-long all right, but for fuck's sake I wanted Wendy to keep her illusions of me with a nine-to-five, making it in the big city. Okay? Maybe I wanted someone to think well of me, someone somewhere who could keep it to herself. I'm not sure come to think of it that Wendy thinks well of me. But if not she never says anything. That's important.

Everything ached as I flew home; it was my first time on a plane and I couldn't even enjoy it. Mostly I just sat there and stared at the clouds, watched the wrinkly landscape crawl beneath the window. Wondered how it would be to fall from how high up we were. If the plane just evaporated. Would I have time to jerk off before I hit the ground?

I wanted to get up and walk the aisle because my ass was on fire but no one would let me. Every inch of my skin prickled and my cuts felt like someone had poured acid on my face. But inside I didn't feel much of anything except maybe a vague guilt about Wendy. "Be safe," that's what she'd asked me. Just that one thing, and I couldn't do it. I don't think it's in me to be safe. I'm a guy who courts disaster.

Right -- I bet you were thinking that a man raping me and beating my face all to shit has changed me. Yeah, this isn't that kind of story. Maybe I got a fucking clue -- enough to realize that when a guy barks at you to shut up, you don't go into his apartment like some dumb slut -- but getting a clue isn't my strong suit. I looked like Tyson in the seventeenth round, though. My mother freaked out. Eric's mouth dropped open when he saw me and he tried to hide it but unfortunately he cannot hide things from me. I told them I was mugged -- Eric and his idiot friend, the boy I knew from Little League, from the shag carpeting on the floor of coach's house. The idiot kid looked sorry for me, but Eric was not buying it. Well, I don't keep him around because I like his bleached forelock. Now that I've told idiot boy the story of me and coach, maybe Eric will be next.

I guess I was the idiot kid's dream come true; he looked at me like I was the second coming. I took him to coach's house and told him the whole story and he cried it out on my lap like I was his mom or something. But it didn't make us friends. And seeing him made my life a hell of a lot worse. I was always proud of the way me and coach were together. I did what coach wanted and he loved me and I got a shitload of fruit loops and video games out of it. That's the way it was. That's the way I thought it was. But listening to Brian, it was like, you knew a story, right? And you'd known that story all your life. But then suddenly someone came and told the story a different way and it was really an ugly story, fucking ugly and messed up and you were sorry you'd ever heard it in the first place.

With Brian it was all mixed up with his dad and his nose bleeding and aliens and shit. Which makes no sense to me but I guess it was his way of rewriting what happened. Rewriting. I didn't want to rewrite how someone finally made me feel special for one shitty summer while my mother was fucking her latest and watching the 9 oclock news with a vodka orange juice. But now listening to him I feel like yeah, it all makes sense. Coach was an alien and he made me into one. He gave me his long fingers and his black staring eyes. I don't fit in on Earth anymore but I have nowhere to go.

I spend evenings in the park but I don't get in anyone's car. Yet. Eric comes and sits with me or we play soccer or smoke grass. Sometimes he brings Brian but mostly he senses that I don't really like Brian. I mean the kid is okay but really kind of a fuckwad and he makes me kind of jittery. So Eric comes alone and we sit there in the Kansas twilight and he tells me about his classes at community college. Like algebra and shit. Shit I never could do, never tried to do. Normal shit. For all his makeup, Eric is surprisingly normal and sweet and kind. I can say whatever I want and he'll just smile at me. Sometimes I remember how I kissed him. It was only in fun and in anger and he never called me on it. Never asked me why. Never asked me to do it again.

Then he leaves when it gets too dark. Says he has homework. Whatever. So I sit there crosslegged with sand shifting all around me and the swings creaking their rusty chains, and I wait. If I go off with another man I might miss it: the blue light like Brian said, the hazy fog blinding me, the shadow reaching out its skinny arms. The half-familiar voice, finally saying my name.

\--end--

title from the old 97s song, "Alone So Far."


End file.
